About Me

Hello, gentle viewers.

My name is Alyssa Juan and I love to cook! On Serve With Rice I will share with you all my favorite recipes, places to eat, and some tips and tricks about cooking that I’ve picked up over the years. I’m from Northern Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., and I consider it home. I currently live in Austin, TX. I was originally born in the Philippines and moved to the States when I was just four years old, so a lot of my posts are Filipino food. That’s a huge part of my love for cooking.

I’m a home cook–never been to culinary school. Everything I know I’ve learned from my mom, actually cooking, or reading about cooking. A lot of the recipes I post are family recipes or things I like to cook, but some are just born from my crazy brain as well. Job-wise, I’m a hobby blogger and full-time dreamer just starting out in the career world.

What else should you know?

Not much else, but here are some other interesting things about me: I’m a dog person, and I love my family dog to death. I love pandas, they are absolutely adorable. I am a huge UVA fan (not football, obviously) and root for them every year in March Madness. I watch a lot of television and maybe someday you’ll see some posts about that. My other passions include reading, writing, spending time with family and friends, and learning.

A little about the blog

What does Serve with Rice mean?

A huge part of eating for Filipinos and most Asian cultures in general, means that everything is served with rice. Even when we order delivery or take out, there’s a pot of rice cooking to go along with it. I have many memories of eating Popeyes with rice and feeling weird when other families didn’t do the same. And to the amusement of many of my friends, our rice cooker even sits on top of a tall rice dispenser, because we buy rice by the bag-full, obviously. Thus, many of my dishes are meant to be served with rice and will say so in the recipe!

What are my favorite things to eat?

My favorite food in the world is shrimp tempura—the crunch, the texture, the amazing flavor and oh, do I love shrimp! My favorite desserts are cheesecake, ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, tiramisu, turon (Filipino sweet treat), and anything chocolate. My favorite Filipino dish is sinigang, but there’s a lot of others too. I love a lot of kinds of food and like I always say, I’ll try anything once.

That’s about it for now! Thanks so much for checking out my site. I hope you find something you’ll love to eat here, so peruse away. Why not start with my first post? Or maybe my first recipe? And when you’re done here, check out my social media pages and send me an email with your thoughts!